Our School
Children’s Workshop is centrally located in the Mission Valley area of San Diego. Our beautiful, bright building welcomes students, families, and visitors and it supports our mission by encouraging our positive outlook on learning. The inviting design of our facility can be seen in the well-maintained landscape, the expansive and colorful playgrounds, the vibrant artwork, the student centered displays, and the clean, well-organized instructional areas.

The layout of our school permits one-to-one instruction and therapy as needed, small group instruction, and large group activities like story time and music. We have a brand new, fully functioning kitchen and laundry in which our students learn some of the basics of self-care. There is a wide-open, general activity area where our students can engage in a variety of sensory and motor activities and to which we invite our families and friends for musical performances and plays.

Two outside play areas are enclosed by fences to support our desire to keep our students as safe as possible. One of the areas includes a climbing apparatus that meets current safety standards and on which our younger students love to explore. The other area is a spacious playground designed as a multipurpose park in which our students learn group games like baseball and basketball, ride bikes among the sweet gum trees, or just roll on the artificial turf. All told, our facility is a wonderful place for our students to come to school. We understand when, from time to time, one of them doesn’t want to leave for the day.

Our Team
Our team consists of one special educator for each group of eight students, a compliment of paraprofessionals necessary to educate our students at a ratio of 1.5 students for each direct service staff member, additional paraprofessionals as needed to educate students who require a one-to-one ratio, a fully licensed Speech/Language therapist, and a Registered Occupational Therapist. Our Program Coordinator and Director are fully credentialed teachers and BCBA’s.

We are positive and energetic; we love our work and our students; and we function as a true team, with a common mission to have our students learn as rapidly and as enjoyably as possible. Our professionals are top notch and many of our paraprofessionals have BA’s and are in professional training programs. Everyone at CW is eager to be the best educator possible. We are keen students of what researchers tell us is effective and efficient instruction and therapy, and we are actively involved in conducting our own research to validate our methods. In order to be the best, we train the hardest. Training, including coaching, is a daily affair.

Training is essential
All of our staff members receive regular evaluations on their performance across more than 100 teaching competencies. In order for them to master our competencies, and truly use what works, intensive training is necessary.

Our professionals and paraprofessionals are provided with a series of required foundation trainings on our philosophies and practices. These trainings include a survey of the concepts supporting our methods, video samples displaying our practices, and role-plays that permit guided practice of the essential skills of instruction. The following is a list of some of trainings we regularly provide:

• ABA Principles and Practices
• Identifying and Managing Reinforcers
• Session or Student Skills
• Modulation and Differential Reinforcement
• Effective Instructional Practices
• Prompting and Error Correction
• Data Collection and Data Based Decision Making
• Discrete Trial Teaching
• Incidental Teaching

• Verbal Behavior
• Functional Communication Training
• Conditional Discrimination Training
• Activity Schedules
• Functional Behavior Assessment
• Preventing and Managing Problem Behaviors
• Direct Instruction
• Fluency Building

Training requires coaching
Of greatest importance is our heavy emphasis on coaching in the classroom. Hands-on coaching is essential for the mastery of critical teaching skills. Opportunities for our teachers to benefit from coaching are ongoing and continue throughout their career with TIEE. Coaching may be pre-planned or incidental and all coaching interactions are documented and reviewed to measure their effect. Instructional observations involving data collection on specific teacher behaviors are conducted and the results are shared with individual staff members regularly and as needed.

We provide advanced training for professionals. Our teachers and specialists receive both formal training and coaching on more advanced applications of our methods and practices. Regular professional development meetings involve review of existing research, development of future research designs, curriculum development, data shares and analysis, video shares with feedback on instructional delivery, and ongoing training in the following areas:

• Supervision and Training of Paraprofessionals
• Curriculum Based Assessment
• IEP Development

• Designing Effective Lessons
• Behavior Intervention Planning
• Parent Collaboration and Communication